finally exits with her bottles of wine. When she shuts her door, Lucy and I study one another.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I don’t like being here,” Lucy says. “It’s not fun.”
Because she’s wary of deep water and because being the youngest there with no one else anywhere near her age, it can be boring for her. “I’ll swim with you.”
“I want to go to Bridgett’s. She invited me over and Mom said no.”
“I’ll take you there tomorrow, okay?”
“Our house has monsters.”
Quick switch-up in conversation and that confession from my sister creates an uneasiness in my gut. Veronica has been telling me since the start that the house is haunted, but somehow the words falling from Lucy’s lips is chilling. “Is that why you have nightmares?”
“The little girl doesn’t scare me, but the man does.”
My spine straightens. “What man?”
“The one who comes in at night. He can change what he looks like. Sometimes he looks the same, most times he doesn’t.” Lucy hugs her mermaid closer to her chest, and she drops her voice like she’s terrified someone will hear her and she’ll get in trouble. “Sometimes, he peeks into my room. One time, he walked in and stared at me.”
My blood turns cold. “What did you do?”
“I screamed before he could touch me and he left. Then you came and sang to me.”
That could be any given night since we moved in. I don’t understand why her nightmares are so bad and include random men. The idea creates a sickening sloshing in my stomach.
“Does Daddy not love us?” Lucy asks, and her question causes my lungs to squeeze. “I heard Mommy say that to Hannah.”
A knock on my window, I jump and spot Sylvia smiling and waving at me. Before I can respond, Sylvia opens Lucy’s door and undoes her seat belt. “How are you doing, Luce?”
“I don’t know. Mommy says we aren’t allowed to talk.”
Sylvia’s forehead furrows, and I’m swamped with the urge to bang my head against the steering wheel. Instead, I get out of the car, shoulder Lucy’s backpack and watch as Sylvia picks up my sister, giving her a huge bear hug accompanied by a ton of kisses.
It’s a comfort to watch, but I’m also cautious. Sylvia’s been ignoring me since I publicly picked Veronica as a partner. Which has been fun considering we share the same friends and have swim practice together every damn day.
Lucy giggles and squeals when Sylvia gives her a raspberry on her cheek. Sylvia then sets her on the ground, reaches into the car for the mac-n-cheese and hands it to Lucy. “Go take this to Mom. I need to talk to your hardheaded brother. And, Lucy, you better not eat it all!”
Lucy laughs as she tells Sylvia that she will eat it all, and Sylvia mock pouts.
“Stay away from the pool until I’m there,” I call out, and Lucy responds with, “Okay.”
Once Lucy’s inside, Sylvia leans back against the car. “Hey.”
“Hardheaded?”
“Would jerk work better?”
“Probably.”
She smirks then uses a finger to poke my bicep. “You okay? You look a bit out of it.”
“I’m good.” I rub the back of my head. I could tell Sylvia about the string of weird conversations I just had with Mom and then Lucy, but then figure Lucy’s right—we aren’t allowed to talk. “I had to teach the toddlers’ swim classes today and then I’ve been working on homework. I’m brain dead.”
Sylvia notices the folded diary and snatches it from my back pocket. “What’s this?”
The instinct is to take it back, but the bigger deal I make out of it, the harder it will be to pry it from her hands. “Research.”
“On your ghost project?”
“Yeah. It’s a diary of a girl who lived in a TB hospital in upstate New York in 1918.”
Sylvia flips through the pages. “You carry this around with you everywhere you go. I catch you sneaking in reading all the time.” She glances at me and it’s uncomfortable on my part. “I see you more than you know, Sutherland.”
She’s right, I carry the diary with me all the time, read it every chance I get. There’s something in Evelyn’s simple, everyday life that calls out to me—her underlying loneliness, her need for peace, to be part of something, to go home, to be cured of something she can’t control … and her need to live.
“Miguel and I are talking in circles about what our topic should be.” She hands the diary back to me. “Did you know that neither Miguel nor I like